


Gay, Exciting Things

by mintboy (orphan_account)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, First Person Minor, Homophobic Language, Humanstuck, Inspired by The Great Gatsby, John's POV, Light Angst, M/M, POV First Person, Romance, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-08-03 10:05:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16324157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/mintboy
Summary: John Egbert attended two of Dave Strider's extravagant parties, and in his eyes, they were the two most important ones. He had become a thin, red ribbon in Strider's life; a thing he'd never lose, because he had played a part in bringing him together with someone he had long awaited.For my boyfriend; inspired by and loosely based on The Great Gatsby.





	Gay, Exciting Things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KittyMotor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittyMotor/gifts).



In New York, _Strider_ was less of a name and more of a concept. You see, when a person hears a name, the associations which arise in their mind are more often than not related to a person – their stature and appearance, their personality. It would be why you would perhaps refrain from calling your child a name with which you had a negative association – if someone of that name had wronged you, only they would come to mind.

But, I digress.

Strider was a man whom not many could say they had the pleasure of meeting – though, most could say they had heard his name … and been to his house. Strider threw the most extravagant parties – and never invited a soul. All of New York seemed to just fall at his knees, rushing from their hastily parked cars straight into a sort of wild circus that erupted just past the gates of his estate. This was why Strider was not a name; it was a promise. It was an _experience_.

As I said, no one really knew what Strider looked like. He seemed to elude each and every one of the thousands of guests in his own home – who ranged from the rich and famous to those who hardly had a penny to their name.

Everything in his home glittered, during his parties – it was as if the entire place was made of gold. It was always so crowded that a person could hardly move – other than to dance, which most did. Music erupted in the foyer and exploded through the rooms, just barely drowning out the sound of tapping heels from the crowds of young ladies doing the Charleston with the fine young men – sometimes their husbands, sometimes not – who had escorted them to Strider’s party. Each room always seemed more crazed than the last; always shimmering, always populated. Fine drinks flowed like a river in huge, ornate glasses, and even the water of his fountains and pools gleamed like sapphires. It was hard to tell if there were hired entertainers or simply just overexcited guests who had found themselves perched on ledges, dancing, their shadows riddled with reflections of the glitter on their short dresses.  

The parties were not Strider’s – no, it seemed they belonged to the people who attended them, as if he were just barely pulling a string behind a curtain to keep them afloat. However, this was not true. The parties didn’t belong to Strider, no, but they didn’t belong to the attendees, either. The parties were a gift. They belonged to someone who had not yet attended one, perhaps only because Strider was not one to give out invitations.

I know this, because Strider told me himself.

I only attended two of his parties, probably because they were the only two that ever mattered – well, the first one, to me … the second, to the whole of New York. But, I will return to that at a later time.

The first party I had attended was at the request of my sister, Jade. She had just moved in with me, having come from some far-away island home to pursue some sort of more extravagant life in the city – which, sadly, was not where I lived. You see, I could hardly afford to live in the city itself, even though my work was there. I worked on Wall Street – an occupation that was time consuming, but promising. I hoped to be able to move to the city at a later date. Jade, on the other hand, spent much of her time in the city for other reasons; mostly exploring it, experiencing it. I found the city somewhat overwhelming, but fascinating still, and often she dragged me behind her on her little adventures. It was on one of these that she heard of Strider’s great, extravagant parties, and she insisted that we just must attend one.

So, we did. We hitched a ride with some of Jade’s less … friendly acquaintances, whom I had a loose sort of trust in. Strider’s house was in West Egg, and it was hard to miss – it was the biggest one there. It towered just over the surrounding trees with a sort of warm, welcoming stance; nothing like the intimidation of a castle or skyscraper. It was lit up from every window, and heading towards the yellow light of the party inside was somewhat like a comfortable descent into a warm bath.

“Oh, it’s lovely,” Jade remarked as we walked through the estate and towards the party. Her dress flowed at her sides in a wave, and the light coming from inside the house making the beads and jewels on her dress glimmer like stars.

“Yes, the eel’s hips!” I replied, curling a hand in my pocket nervously. I took off my hat. It really was something special.

Jade and her … friends disappeared somewhat early into the party, so I made a fair priority of getting myself absolutely bent. I found some sort of attractive, blue drink, and made my way around, conversing with a slew of smart people whom I’d never met before. They spoke of life, and love – and Strider. The one behind the parties, who was more mystery than man. Who, perhaps, had killed someone, or come all the way from Europe as a spy, or perhaps, something worse than both combined. I continued this row of drinks and gossip for a while. That was, until I quite literally ran into who I thought was only some tight party-goer.

“Excuse me,” he brushed off his suit, “my apologies.”

“No, no, it’s fine!” I responded, “it’s quite the blow, isn’t it?”

“Indeed,” a charming laugh danced on his lips.

“I’ve not seen Strider, though,” I added, “there’s a lot of rumors about him.”

“Only good ones, I hope,” he replied, “I’d hate to have my guests thinking lowly of me.”

It was then that I realized.

I looked up, and Strider was not at all who I had pictured. With the price of these events, I had in mind some old, fat man hunched over in a bedroom, watching the party unfold from a small window. But, Strider was quite the opposite. He was young, about my age, and was sporting a fine red and black suit. His hair was blonde, very light, and combed neatly back. His eyes were an odd color; a sort of uncomfortable red. They glinted with a kind of youthful hope I was unfamiliar with.

“Pardon me, I –” I struggled to find my words, fixing my eyeglasses, “I had no idea you were Mr. Strider.”

He laughed again.

“It’s no worry at all, bo, and, please, Dave is fine,” he replied, waving a hand dismissively, “and your name?”

“John – er, John Egbert. My sister heard of your parties from a friend at The Serenity Club.”

Strider – Dave’s – eyes seemed to widen.

“I see,” he said, his voice nothing more than a breath. I could barely hear him over the energy around us, and there was a look on his face of disbelief, as if what I had said was some sort of enchanting spell.

“John, could I speak to you in private?” he said, suddenly, and I blinked.

“Oh, yes, sure,” I smoothed back my hair.

He led me back through the crowd, into a small, private study. The door was locked. This is where he told me about the real meaning behind the parties – behind the promise that his name made to New York. He invited me to sit down, pouring me a drink and offering me a cigarette. He remained standing, a sort of restlessness in his limbs.

“… Do you frequent this Serenity Club, bo?” he asked, after a few moments of uncomfortable silence.

“Well, yes,” I answered quickly, “Jade – my sister – is good friends with quite a few of its regulars … the bartenders, too.”

The silence returned, and Dave tapped his foot, as if to will it away.

“Do you know why I throw these parties?” he turned to me. There was some emotion in his face that I couldn’t read. I could feel the ruckus below us in my toes.  

“… I don’t know. A good time? To give back to the city?”

Dave laughed.

“I owe nothing to this city. I grew up out West,” he said dismissively, finally taking a seat in front of me, “I throw these parties … knowing that many, many people will show up. I throw them, because I’m hoping, waiting –” he cut himself off with a deep breath, looking away. His eyes revealed so much; I thought, briefly, of how stoic he might seem if he could hide them away.

In his pause, it came to me what he was saying.

“You’re throwing these parties, hoping _one person_ will come?”

He nodded.

“That’s – that’s,” I stopped myself at the hope in his eyes, unwilling to insult him.

“I know that, perhaps, if I keep pushing – the bigger, the _more_ extravagant … he might notice.”

I could feel the sudden wideness of my eyes.

“That’s absurd!” I blurted, and he looked up at me, “why haven’t you just _invited_ him?”

A look of pained disbelief crossed his pale, freckled face.

“ _Invited him_?”

It was almost as if inviting someone to a party wasn’t nearly grand enough for him; as if the man he was attempting to attract needed to be grabbed and drawn in on his own accord. The party needed to be so lavish, so _perfect_ that this man would just wander inside.

“No, no, bo – I could never,” he pressed a hand to his face, covering his mouth. I suddenly had a realization; Dave was in love. It was in his eyes, in his expression. It billowed across his skin in waves, soft and sweet.

“You’re a fag,” I muttered. He glanced over at the word, but said nothing. I watched him for a moment, and he swallowed. It was then that, perhaps, courage crawled up his throat, previously wracked with his nerves.

“…I need you to do me a favor, bo,” he said, “I … I’d like for you to find him, perhaps see why he hasn’t come. There must be something I’ve done wrong, I know it; I just don’t know what it could _be_ ,” he slammed his cigarette onto his ornate ashtray to punctuate the last word.

“Are you positive that you wouldn’t just want me to ask for him to join you here?” I fixed my glasses again, though they hadn’t even slipped down my nose. I already knew the answer. That would be an _invitation_.

“No,” Dave said firmly, taking a step towards me, “under no circumstances are you to explicitly invite him … nor tell him it was I who sent you to ask. Do you understand, bo?”

I nodded.

“Good, good,” Dave slumped down into a chair. His fine, crisp suit was beginning to wrinkle, his hair falling down in his face. I had just met him, but I felt as if I was seeing a man I had known for a lifetime. There was a weakness in him, suddenly, that was visible; a weakness from love. I was pulled from my head as he began to speak again, elaborating.

“His name is Karkat Vantas. He’s a bartender at The Serenity Club, you see. But that’s not how I know him,” Dave paused, looking down, a sort of forlorn look in his eyes, “you won’t miss him, bo, I’m sure of it. How he just shines like the sun.”

“When did you meet him?” I asked, and Dave looked up. This question might have crossed a line, I knew – we had known each other for less than a single hour, and below the dark quiet of this study, a party raged on below us. I was no one special; Dave knew senators, celebrities, the rich and famous. But, I gathered, as Dave opened his mouth to reply, that perhaps he didn’t have many friends among these people. After all, no one seemed to truly know him.

I was not a friend to Dave Strider, but I was a string. A thin, red ribbon that connected him to the man he so desperately desired. And that was enough for him to answer my question.

“… We haven’t seen each other in years; five, to be exact. When we met, we were both drafted into the war, you see, as I’m sure you were as well. I was in the 42nd Infantry Division – the Rainbow Division – as was he. I didn’t know him for a while, at first, but over the course of our training, I got to know him quite well. You see, we were in France, and his versing in French was much more advanced than mine. I came to rely on him, and from there our friendship blossomed.

You see, I knew, when I saw him – that if I let myself, I’d fall so deeply in love. So, I held back, I hesitated … yet, he drew me in. And I fell, bo. I fell from stories high, and … he did too, I’m sure of it.”

He stopped, taking a deep breath.

“…What happened?” I asked, quietly.

“The Battle of Saint-Mihiel,” he answered in a quick, labored breath. It was easy to tell that he was still not versed in French, as the name was surely butchered.

What Dave told me next was a story of tragedy – one that painted an image in my mind that I will never be able to forget.

The crisp, cold September air in Limey as the troops advanced would’ve been hellish, even in their thick clothing. The trenches would’ve been freezing and wet; and there Dave would’ve ducked down beside Karkat as the battle raged on, bullets pelting the raised wall behind them.

I saw Dave turning in my mind’s eye as he heard a piercing scream. I saw him scrambling towards Karkat, laying in the dirt at the bottom of the trench and clutching his stomach as he howled in pain. I saw the tears on Dave’s pale cheeks, hollowed at the time from malnutrition and littered with ugly blemishes. I saw him desperately grasping Karkat’s face as he sobbed, ripping off the bottom of his shirt and pressing it into the wound to try and stop the bleeding. I saw the desperate, inarticulate pleas falling from Dave’s lips as Karkat went into shock. I felt the cold in his trembling hands, in his heart.

“… they took him away from me, I suppose. My memory is … isn’t so clear. I hadn’t seen him after that. I – I had figured he’d died,” Dave muttered, bringing a hand to his eyes. If he was truly crying, I could hardly tell; his voice was steady as ever, though there was something that lingered in it. A sort of melancholy that mixed with the hope that seemed to radiate from him.  

“Then, I received a letter. Two, three, four, five, six – all Karkat, from his hospital bed in New York. But I couldn’t return them.”

“Why not?” I asked, gripping the arm of the chair tightly. I was enthralled.

“I didn’t grow up a rich man, bo,” Dave muttered, “I had a dream for us, you see, for Karkat and I. Going into the war, I didn’t have enough money to support the both of us. I wanted to give him something extravagant, something he deserved, and I could now. So, I vowed to wait.”

I blinked at him, pulling my hands together in my lap.

“You wanted him to have this,” I said, in realization, glancing around the room and thinking of the raging, shimmering party still continuing beneath us. Of the size of the estate; the thousands of flowers, the fountains and pools.

“Exactly,” Dave finished, exhaling. He stood, turning to face the wall behind him. It was a bookshelf, littered with titles I had never seen before. “I need you to do this for me, bo. I need to see him again, but this needs to be perfect.”

He craned his head to look back at me.

“Can I trust you?”

The answer I gave, of course, was yes. There was something about Strider – something so different than everyone else I’d ever met – and though the idea of doing this favor for him felt as if it should’ve been a tremendous weight on my shoulders, it was nothing of that sort. In fact, it manifested more as a warmth, deep in my chest. I was to reunite two lovers; to play a crucial role in their lives, something which they would never forget.

The thin red ribbon.

When Jade and I next visited The Serenity Club, she could tell there was some sort of wildness in my eyes as I first walked through the door. She kept asking, and asking, and asking – but I did not tell her. She was quick to speak what was on her mind, and I couldn’t risk revealing Dave’s favor.

I knew who Karkat was before he even told me his name.

He was bartending. There was an air that followed him that was warm, rich. The movements he made were harsh and purposeful, and his voice punctuated by a sort of meaning that one would only find in a song that few could understand but all could appreciate. His words lingered in the air in a way that felt as if they slipped from reality, as if each thing he said was a line to a poem that would never carry the same weight again.

It was a deep, deep radiance that he carried. The kind in a wood-fire, the kind that burns low and with a passionate intensity.

“Mr. Vantas?” I asked, sitting down at the bar.

The man turned, and I had been correct; though there had been no doubt in my mind. I didn’t order a drink, just stared, waiting.

“What?” he asked, walking over. Confusion painted his face, “…have we met?”

“Well, no,” I replied, “… I was –”

“Karkat!” Jade bounded over, throwing her hands over the bar and around Karkat’s shoulders. Karkat shrugged away, scowling.

“Oh, don’t be a killjoy,” Jade continued, before gesturing towards me, “this is my brother, John.”

Karkat glanced over at me, and his expression went unchanged. Jade sat down beside me.

“You know how I was telling you about that grand party I went to the other night, with Vriska? Well, John came along, and it was just splendid, wasn’t it?” she turned to me, and I felt myself freeze. The conversation I hadn’t been sure how to start had just slid carefully into my lap, as if by some will of God was acting in favor of Dave Strider.

“It was,” I responded flatly.

“I wish I could’ve seen the host. Strider, I think his name was,” Jade propped her chin on her hand, “he’s some kind of mystery. It’s thrilling.”

Karkat put down the glass he was holding.

“Strider?” he said under his breath.

It had hit me then that perhaps Karkat just simply hadn’t heard of the parties; though it seemed like the entirety of the city showed up on Dave’s doorstep, the parties only spread by word of mouth, and it had been entirely possible that Karkat just hadn’t heard.

“All of New York just comes to his door,” I found myself saying, before I had even realized the words had left my mouth, “no invitations.”

Karkat picked up the glass again. His hands were shaking.

“Oh, you should come next time, Karkat,” Jade said, not realizing the air around her had changed, “they’re just splendid.”

Karkat coughed.

“I don’t think so,” he said sharply. In that moment, I thought perhaps I had was doomed to go back to Dave, tell him that, maybe, Karkat just wasn’t interested in opening a wound that had been long healed.

I was wrong.

The next day was the weekend, and Jade, Karkat, Vriska and I found ourselves whizzing down the narrow roads of West Egg, heading towards the grand party that was bound to be raging at Strider’s estate.

I wasn’t sure what had changed Karkat’s mind; maybe, deep down, he had wanted to say yes to Jade all along – and was just tipped over the edge by her begging of him before we had left the bar the night before. I had no idea, but his nervousness was clear as we sped up through the gates and parked on the lawn.

Jade and Vriska were dressed in their most extravagant, shimmering dresses, and I in just a white button-up and simple jacket. Karkat was in a suit, the fine black sort. We walked up the path to the doors in the busy throng of people, and it seemed Karkat’s eyes were wide with wonder as we entered.

I then realized why Dave had done this.

It wasn’t his dream; it was theirs. And when Karkat stared at the gleaming, buzzing party before him, he saw into an imagination that he and Dave had shared a long, long time ago. He saw a sort of magic come true.

Jade took Karkat by the hand, dragging him up the stairs in the foyer and chatting away.

I glanced to the side and saw Dave, who smiled at me, raising a hand to wave. His eyes quickly fell to Karkat, and he froze. I’ll never forget the look he gave; as if he had seen some kind of ghost. The color left his face, but there was so much warmth in his eyes. He visibly shrunk, as if he wanted to run, but I shook my head.

I turned quickly, knowing I had to act, and tugged on Karkat’s arm.

“John, what the –” he snarled, but stopped as his eyes fell on Dave.

The moments where they just stood, looking into each other’s eyes, felt as if perhaps there was no party around us at all. It had a sort of private intensity; as if it was something I shouldn’t be witnessing – yet I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

Dave slowly walked over, weaving through the crowd, until he was standing directly in front of Karkat, who was just staring, eyes wide.

Both of them were silent; it was odd, seeing the two most talkative people I had met – completely silent. Then, Karkat launched himself forward, his arms wrapping around Dave’s lanky shoulders. Dave was quick to return the embrace, tightly, burying his head in Karkat’s shoulder. They pulled apart, hastily conversing as the crowd around them pulsed.

I’m not sure what words they exchanged, but sometimes I like to imagine them. That it was some kind of revelation, like they were giving each other miracles through their lips, each syllable that fell from their open mouths as shimmering and magical as the scene that Dave had created.

I did manage to hear one thing, though – Dave, glancing upward, and then back into Karkat’s eyes as he said, “it’s all for you.”

After they reunited, they disappeared, presumably up to the study I had seen the night before. When they returned, they were laughing, dancing, singing together. Their eyes were gleaming with unshed tears. The party around them suddenly made sense – it was no longer a mystery, a party with no meaning. Strider was no longer a promise of a good time. It was a man in love, a man who organized a party each weekend with only hope in his eyes and heart. An idiot, but a wonderful one, nonetheless.

I said before that the second party I attended was important not only to me, but to all of New York. And that is because it was the final one. When the last of the people finally left the estate that night, Karkat stayed, and the gates closed. The warm, yellow lights still flickered in the windows, but even when the cars arrived on the weekend, the gates did not open. Sometimes, Strider was in the news – after all, to most, the parties ceasing just didn’t make sense, but it made sense to me.

Jade and I never did go back, as we were no one special to them, in the long run; just specks in a long timeline of endless, unforgotten love. But there was one thing I knew – I was still a little red ribbon in Dave Strider’s past, and that was something I’d never lose.


End file.
